Events in celebration of April 20th, cannabis day, have become widespread. From bong circles in dorm rooms and cultural celebrations to smoke-outs in city parks, four-twenty parties are eagerly planned across the country. Though well-known and widely-celebrated, four-twenty is often stigmatized and stereotyped as a “stoner” holiday. It is undeniably a day to celebrate marijuana by enjoying it, but it is more than just an excuse to light up. The popular celebration of four-twenty and cannabis culture in general, is blatantly dismissive of U.S. policy. As smokers nationwide celebrated their cannabis use, the Obama Administration was amid a historic crackdown on voter-approved medical marijuana programs. To tip the scales a little, a recent Gallup poll showed that, for the first time, 50% of Americans support cannabis legalization. Nonetheless, 46% of drug arrests are related to marijuana possession; and pot arrestees are disproportionately people of color. In many states, a cannabis arrest can result in the removal of children from parents, the inability to receive federal aid for school, and jail time. Four-twenty, a celebration of marijuana despite the federal government’s staunch position on the plant, represents mass non-compliance with our country's absurd prohibition laws. Ditching cannabis prohibition would save $7.7 billion on state and federal expenditures, and taxing marijuana like alcohol or tobacco could generate an additional $6.2 billion in revenue, totaling $13.7 billion annually. The economic potential of legalization recently led three hundred economists to sign an open letter to the President, Congress, Governors, and State Legislators asking they allow America “to commence an open and honest debate about marijuana prohibition.” On top of everything else, legalizing pot could help ease devastating violence in Latin America. In Mexico alone, 50,000 people have lost their lives to the drug war in the past five years. As experts routinely profess, legalizing marijuana alone could save thousands of lives in Mexico. But while Latin American leaders urge the U.S. to consider drug policy alternatives, including legalization, the Obama Administration refuses to implement reform at home or abroad. Four-twenty thus, is a cultural reminder of the vast disparity between marijuana laws and reality. It is a evidence that, despite 40 years of a disastrous war on drugs, people, including Obama, continue to experiment with, and safely enjoy, cannabis.

Last year, over 850k people in America were arrested for marijuana-related crimes. Despite public opinion, the medical community, and human rights experts all moving in favor of relaxing cannabis prohibition laws, little has changed in terms of policy. There have been many great books and articles detailing the history of the drug war. Part of America’s fixation with keeping the leafy green plant illegal is rooted in cultural and political clashes from the past. However, there are entrenched interest groups that are spending large sums of money to keep our broken drug laws on the books:

1.) Police Unions: Police departments across the country have become dependent on federal drug war grants to finance their budget. A police union lobbyist in California coordinated the effort to defeat Prop 19, a ballot measure in 2010 to legalize cannabis, while helping his police department clients collect tens of millions in federal marijuana-eradication grants. And it’s not just in California. Federal lobbying disclosures show that other police union lobbyists have pushed for stiffer penalties for marijuana-related crimes nationwide.

2.) Private Prison Corporations: Private prison corporations make millions by incarcerating people who have been imprisoned for drug crimes, including marijuana. Corrections Corporation of America, one of the largest for-profit prison companies, revealed in a regulatory filing that continuing the drug war is part in parcel to their business strategy. Prison companies have spent millions bankrolling pro-drug war politicians and have used secretive front groups, like the American Legislative Exchange Council, to pass harsh sentencing requirements for drug crimes.

3.) Alcohol and Beer Companies: Fearing competition for the dollars Americans spend on leisure, alcohol and tobacco interests have lobbied to keep cannabis out of reach. For instance, the California Beer & Beverage Distributors contributed campaign contributions to a committee set up to prevent marijuana from being legalized and taxed.

4.) Pharmaceutical Corporations: Like the sin industries listed above, pharmaceutical interests would like to keep cannabis illegal so Americans don’t have the option of cheap medical alternatives to their products. Howard Wooldridge, a retired police officer who now lobbies the government to relax marijuana prohibition laws, reported that next to police unions, the “second biggest opponent on Capitol Hill is big Pharma” because cannabis can replace “everything from Advil to Vicodin and other expensive pills.”

5.) Prison Guard Unions: Prison guard unions have a vested interest in keeping people behind bars just like for-profit prison companies. In 2008, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association spent a whopping $1 million to defeat a measure that would have “reduced sentences and parole times for nonviolent drug offenders while emphasizing drug treatment over prison.

The government of Columbia pushed on Saturday for the most far-reaching change to policy on drugs since US president Richard Nixon declared war on narcotics four decades ago. Hosting the sixth Summit of the Americas, for which 33 leaders of the hemisphere's 35 nations – including President Barack Obama, had assembled in Cartagena. President Juan Manuel Santos proposed the establishment of a taskforce of experts, economists, and academics to analyze the realities of global drug addiction, trafficking, and profiteering, with a view to a complete overhaul of strategy. Santos's close aide and ambassador to London, Mauricio Rodríguez, said the outcome "could mean anything from blanket legalization to a new and different war on drugs. We just do not know until we have the data, investigate every option with open minds, and have the full picture drawn up by experts who know the terrain, and are not motivated by interests, ideology, or emotion. Whatever it is, it must be real change, based upon new paradigms. He added: "Why is Colombia leading this? Because we learned the hard way, and we have the moral authority; In the 1980s we failed to face the reality, and as a result our society was taken to the brink and almost destroyed by violence and the drug cartels. And we do not want other places, in Central America or Africa, to go through the pain we went through. They, and all of us, have to act fast, because the many-headed monster grows very fast and destroys very fast.” "For so many years it has been easy for politicians to blame drug-producing nations like Colombia for poisoning their lovely kids. And the result has been a stigma on Colombia. But that game, that farce, is now over. We are not pointing any fingers, and Colombia will not act unilaterally. But we are saying that there is a shared responsibility between consuming and producing nations who must all now co-operate on a global scale to stop the scourge of drugs in our societies." Rodríguez cited a recent debate broadcast on Google and YouTube by the London-based organization, Intelligence Squared as having “demonstrated why we have got nowhere: emotion, insults, and celebrities.” He said the taskforce urged by the Colombians “needs to be made up of real experts: people who know the realities of drugs, the sociology and anthropology of drugs, the economics of drugs, and the trafficking and laundering routes; and people who know what drugs do on the ground.” The body would “look at the social issues, the reasons why people take drugs: poverty, social breakdown, abuse, and dysfunction.” Talking about the Colombian city of Medellín, once the drug murder capital of the world and now regenerated, Rodríguez said: "We need to look at the kinds of social urbanism that we applied to Medellín, which can isolate the criminals and give people other things to do with their lives, rather than resort to drugs." Last week Colombia announced the results of research which shows that only 5% of profits from Colombia's drug trade remain in the country. Hundreds of billions of dollars of drug money finds its way, said Rodríguez, into "the distribution networks in the consuming countries, and the international banking system.”

The "real value of the drugs,” said the ambassador, "is not added in the countries of production, but once the product is moved; mainly to the US and Europe. And it is therefore clear that more must be done to fight international money-laundering of drug profits by the banking community."